Demba Ba: Newcastle United’s hottest hitman in recent times.Below is a table comparing the main statistics of all of Newcastle United’s main strikers who have played in the Hughton / Pardew years. There are six, Shola Ameobi, Peter Lovenkrands, Andy Carroll, Leon Best, Demba Ba and most recently of course, Papiss Cisse.
Please note that this is for Premier League games only. Championship stats have been excluded as they would obviously give the players who played a full season in the lower division an unfair advantage. As well as that, cup games have also been escluded too to make as level a playing field as possible (if you’ll pardon the pun). I think you might find one or two surprises in there, which was partly the reason I did this post in the first place.
I suppose I could have included Kevin Nolan too, as his goalscoring and assist figures would also stand up with the names below after Chris Hughton moved him further forward into the “hole” as they say, however this one’s for strikers and Nolan has always been a midfielder, albeit a highly attacking one in recent seasons. (more…)
Who made it? And who didn’t?Below you can see two Newcastle United “teams of the season,” which I have assembled based on player statistics from whoscored.com, OPTA and transfermarkt.co.uk.
The first (and most important) is based on performances in the Premier League, with the second based on performances in the Europa League. The figures below the player’s names are their ratings from whoscored.com, which are based on a range of performance metrics based on OPTA stats. To put these into some kind of perspective, whoscored’s most highly rated Premier League goalkeeper last season was Sunderland’s Simon Mignolet with an average of 7.0. In defence it was Tottenham’s Jan Vertonghen with 7.6 and in midfield the honours were shared between Arsenal’s Santi Cazorla and Tottenham’s Gareth Bale, both with 7.9. Finally, up front, Liverpool’s Luis Suarez narrowly pipped Manchester United’s Robin van Persie (7.8) with his 7.9 rating.
Getting back to Newcastle United though, although the goalkeepers, defenders and strikers were pretty straightforward overall, things became more complicated when it came to midfielders who had been played in several different positions during the season, gaining different ratings in different positions. However, after some work, I have finally managed to sort it out. (more…)
A bright new dawn for NUFC?Many thanks to “ToonBano” from the Toon blog www.toonbano.com for his second guest blog here – wt.
Today is the two year anniversary of Alan Pardew’s very first game as NUFC manager, when we defeated Liverpool 3-1 thanks to goals from Kevin Nolan, Joey Barton and Andy Carroll. Just looking at the goal scorers that evening and the impressive overall performance, compared to who we have in our team now after another defeat at the hands of Fulham Monday Night, it’s safe to say things have changed a lot over that period of time.
Most people were confused and concerned as to why Alan Pardew was even in the dugout that night two years ago as Chris Hughton was doing a sterling job in our first season back in the Premier League after the ultimate humiliation of relegation. Which of course was thanks to him for rescuing this club from certain doom by getting us promoted at the first time of asking, even though he had no previous managerial experience at that point of his life. Most fans thought he was unfairly sacked and I was one of them. (more…)
Highlights of Newcastle United’s first Europa League group stage tie against Girondins de Bordeaux.
The first highlights are aroung 4 1/2 minutes long with English commentary and the second are longer 9 1/2 minute ones, but with French commentary. (more…)
A holiday in the sun for Pardew's happy campers.Venue: Estádio dos Barreiros, Funchal, Madeira. Date: Thurs, 4th October. Kick off: 6:00pm Referee: Robert Schorgenhofer. UK TV: ESPN.
Hello, good evening and welcome to our “match banter” feature for this evening’s Europa League clash versus S.C Maritimo on the paradise island of Madeira, home of Christiano Ronaldo, cake, and many a fine fortified wine.
Even away, the Magpies should normally go into this match as strong favourites, however with injuries and manager Alan Pardew prioritising the Premiership at home, he has travelled with a somewhat depleted squad to Funchal, which should add a bit of a “squeaky bum” factor to this game. However, I will spare you from too much of the usual pre match waffle here, as I have alredy done more than enough of that for this game, not only with my fairly extensive match preview from this morning, but also in another story in my series probing our Europa League Group Stage opponents from a few weeks ago. As I noted in the preview though, the squad Pardew has taken out there is: (more…)
